[Android General] bladebarrier:
Just to give some quick history: I'm a power user, but I'm not a programmer, so my knowledge is limited to what I've experienced and not what the XDA community experts would be capable of doing. I've used RIM, Apple, Android, Win Phone, OSX, DOS, Windows from the beginning, and currently Win8 on my PC's.

Android is an excellent platform, but it has one major flaw: Why does it need to use battery when it's supposed to be sleeping?

I could never go back to Apple. It's far too locked down. It's just.. ugly and clumsy. I loved my BB Bold as a phone, and was saddened to see them go the way of the dodo. I use a Windows phone now, because the battery life is well maintained due to it being somewhat locked down, but not to the point of Apple.

Here's what I'm suggesting for Android. This is primarily for tablet users, but could apply to consumer phones as well.

1. There needs to be a way to force a true sleep mode. This should lock down apps, widgets, and all non-essentials. There is no reason you should have to turn a tablet off every time, or check wakelocks, to minimize battery use, if you put it into sleep mode. If it could boot in the time my ultrabook running Win8 does, I wouldn't care. I'd just shut it down fully, and turn it on for a boot in under 8 seconds. They cannot. Neither can the competition. There needs to be a true sleep mode, and a semi-sleep mode, and a completely on state. One should be for, well, when you're asleep or don't care about updates. One should be for background updates working, but not taxing the battery heavily. One should be for full on status and doing all of the great things Android is capable of.

2. Tasker is pretty neat for some things. JuiceDefender is pretty neat for some things. Unfortunately, they don't solve issue #1. There needs to be an app (root required I'm sure), that truly takes over the combination and applies a full lock-down of all apps and data with the press of a button.

3. It would be nice to have a method to do these things for the average person. The Kindle Fire is pretty locked down, but still Android based. It also gets good battery life because it doesn't have as much running in the background when it's not being used. There is no reason why there shouldn't be a way to switch all Android devices to a mode like that, on the fly. Basically, if you want a widget heavy homepage, but don't need them doing anything when you click a sleep button (like on a laptop), why not have it do exactly that. This way new people can have all of the fancy widgets they want, but also not have to power down when the tablet or phone is not being used for anything but phone/text/email-sync use.

4. People won't want this to be something where screen off means no data, or updates. People will want this to be integrated into a quick button push that is easily seen as having been toggled. "Why you no go sleep like laptop?". There is no reason that my Nexus 7 should use more battery power in its "sleep" state, than my Lenovo i7 tablet ultrabook running Windows 8 does, while sleeping. One could last a few days, one could go for a month.

/end rant... I love my Nexus 7, and loved my Droid X, but my Win phone gets amazing battery life when I'm not using it, because it basically does exactly what I've explained (for better or worse). Ipads are similar. The Blackberry Bold was also similar for me (essentially locked down to phone/email when not in use). The Kindle Fire essentially does this to some extent. The iphone... well, that just stunk all around, so that was the only device I really did not like at all (bad battery life, and locked down anyways). Don't get me wrong, the Nexus 7 has great battery life when in use, and after tinkering, but why the need to shut it completely off at night when it should only use about 1% of the battery in a sleep mode during that time, and not 15%?